Opening words from the Executive Principal

Kia ora tatou, good afternoon, 你好

I’m going to start with another apology: June Wang, who normally translates our newsletter, is still away this week, so we haven’t had the chance to translate it into Chinese. Huge apologies! We will definitely translate the newsletter as usual next week. June will be back in school on Monday.

I think our school has been even busier than usual this week, with exceptionally bustling evenings. Thank you to all the parents who came to the Parent Teacher Conferences on Tuesday and Thursday. I hope you found them useful. I always enjoy these evenings, as I know our staff do, because we get to meet and talk to so many of our parents, and this process sharpens our thinking, and makes
us reflect on what we do. And teachers do enjoy a good chat, as you may have noticed… Even though we communicate in many different ways now, and Seesaw and Schoolbox have quickly become part of our school environment, there is no substitute for a face-to-face conversation. Nearly all our Primary parents came in, which is wonderful to see, and we also saw more parents than usual come to our College conferences. We will be doing some analysis on this over the next few weeks, and we are also reviewing the way we run our conferences, so please feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts about these. One possibility is that we may run a different kind of evening for the older students, so keep an eye out for possible changes in the next round of evenings.

We also had a visit from the Education Review Office this week, the first time
they’ve reviewed the school in five years. It was a very positive experience, and they commented in particular on the high standards they saw everywhere, the high expectations of staff and students, and the exceptionally positive and respectful relationships between staff and students, as well as all around the grounds. They made a particular comment that they saw the values of the school in action: in other words, our core values of respect for self and others, and excellence, are part of everything we do, and run very strongly through our veins. There were lots of other very positive comments as well, and they (of course!) loved our wonderful students, thought the school environment was attractive and fit for learning, and liked our reflective approach, always looking for ways to develop the school further. The report will be published in about eight weeks, and will unfortunately
be very brief, but I wanted our community to know what a great experience it’s been to have the review office in school.

On Wednesday, we had two meetings in the evening: the first was to give the parents of some very excited students all the information they need for the upcoming cultural trip to Europe. The group of 23 students will be visiting the UK and France, and will be representing the school and New Zealand in Ypres, Belgium on ANZAC Day, which promises to be a memorable experience. It’s always possible, unfortunately, that they might even be present on the day the UK slips out of the European Union, so it may be a trip to remember in more ways than one. The second meeting was the inaugural meeting of the ‘Pinehurst Connection’ committee. This is our new parents’ group, and you should expect to see
them become a more visible part of the school over the coming months. I’m very excited by this development, and I know that the group will add a great deal to our community. If you have any questions about their work, please contact Sylvia Lum at school.

Finally: it’s nearly the end of a long, productive term. I am always very proud of our young people, and I wanted to end this week’s message with a special congratulations to all the students who started at Pinehurst this term. They are now part of the fabric of our school. From the five year olds in our new entrants’ classes to the 34 new Year 7 students, to the new Year 12 and 13 students who will only be with us a short while: they have settled in brilliantly, supported by our committed and welcoming staff and students. They have joined in pretty much every
activity they can find, and they have worked hard to learn new things, catch up where necessary, and simply take in the ways our school works. Thank you to the parents of our new students for trusting us, and I hope the children are enjoying themselves and making good progress.

Oh! I nearly forgot: well done to everyone for the Shore-to-Shore turnout. It was amazing! We had 400 entries (nearly 10% of the total entry for the event), and I loved seeing so many of our Primary families eating muffins and fruit after a run/jog/walk along the beach. I was just so proud. Thank you to Mr Taylor and the Junior Primary staff for making it happen, and to all the parents for bringing along your children. I hope you had a great time.

Have a lovely weekend.

Ngā mihi,

Alex Reed

Alex Reed
Executive Principal

WEEK 11

Monday 8th April

Whole School Mufti Day

Wednesday 10th April

Year 8 Leadership Motutapu, Rangitoto Camp (overnight)

Primary Parents Fun Day, 12:30pm - 3pm

Thursday 11th April

TERM 1 ENDS

Kia Ora,

Thank you to all the parents who attended this week’s parent teacher conferences. I do hope that you were able to receive valuable feedback about the progress of your child and what they need to do to move forward within each of the subjects that they study.

Next week is the final week of the term and most students and teachers will be looking forward to the two week Easter holiday. We fully recognise that students need a break from schoolwork and there is no intention to fill the two weeks with holiday homework. However, there are a number of things that students can do to improve their academic progress and help set themselves up for success in Term 2. The school break is an ideal time to ensure that all school work is up to
date and complete. There is time to review topics not fully understood during a busy term. It is also a really good time to be reading, this may involve English texts or more detailed information related to a topic that you are really interested in. I would encourage senior students with Cambridge coursework assignments to organise themselves so that they spend some time progressing their projects and portfolios. This should be an enjoyable experience but unfortunately can become unnecessarily stressful when a student is rushing to complete the work as inflexible external examination deadlines loom.

Today over 40 Silver Duke of Edinburgh students, along with 4 teachers, are travelling to New Plymouth to spend their weekend tramping around Mount Taranaki. Next week a busy term of outdoor experiences will conclude with our Year 8 leadership
camp.

Ngā mihi,

Chris Wiggin and Kieran Verryt

Principals of College

Year 9 'Out there' Camp

No screens, No power, No hot water, No roads, No buildings, No luxuries…

Year 9 students spent last week outside their comfort zone adventuring and exploring the Hauraki Gulf. Check out their video…

Global Citizenship

Year 7 students have recently been on camp and came back with biscuits that were not eaten. After some discussion in all classes it was decided by the students to sell the biscuits and donate the proceeds to the Christchurch shooting victims give-a-little page.

The class councillors and a couple of helpers raised a whopping $88.10 for the appeal. We are so proud of the compassion shown by all the Year 7 students.

NH Zone Day Futsal

Congratulations to our 4 x Junior College teams who competed in the Futsal Zone Day events this week – the first time Pinehurst have taken teams to this new Zone Day event. Our boys teams (Year 7 & Year 8), coached by Mr Reynolds, enjoyed a great day on Tuesday despite some last minute changes to draw on the morning of the event. Both boys teams had some awesome games, with a mix of wins/draws and losses over the day. Thanks to parent managers Reiss & Holly for your support!

Our girls teams, coached by Senior College students Claudia & Ella and supported by Mrs Lindsay, had a
really good day learning lots about Futsal. Our young Year 7 team were very enthusiastic and made the quarter finals after a fabulous 3-1 win against Glenfield. Unfortunately they were then knocked out of the quarter finals, but had an enjoyable day and improved on every game! Our Year 8 girls also made the top 8 after finishing 2nd in their pool. They also showed some real determination, enthusiasm and skill on the court. Thank you to parent managers Genevieve and Kelly for looking after the girls teams on the day.

Orienteering

The Sprint Series is completed and congratulations to Charli Spence (Year 7) and Lilly Stanborough (Year 8) who have qualified to race in the finals this coming weekend. We wish them all the best as they take on runners from all over Auckland. We have had a keen group of 19 Pinehurst students take part in the series and many of them are planning to transition into the harder discipline of forest orienteering.

Thursday this week was the AKSS Individual Championships and 9 Pinehurst students from Year 7-9 travelled to Waiuku forest to compete. For almost all of them this was their first time competing
in the forest and they all did very well to get around the course. Particular congratulations to Amelie Wells who place third in the Year 7/8 Standard Grade.

Fruity Economics

This week in Year 10 Economics, students are investigating markets. So, what better way to understand how a market works than to create our own. Students used barter and currency (monopoly money in this case) to buy and sell fruit in order to maximise the value of their fruit portfolio.

Mrs Mann gave hints about the current market conditions, and students had to guess what impact on price that those conditions would have!

The team that sold their fruit for the most value overall were Yuki, Cecilia and Elisa. They played a safe strategy of holding fruit
that would increase in the next round and were tough negotiators – never giving in to tempting offers from other teams.

Senior Girls Volleyball Season

The girls have had a successful season of volleyball. Both teams have improved and developed tremendously. Pinehurst 1 came second overall in their division and as a result of their good playing, Pinehurst 2 moved up a division half way through the season.

The girls showed huge commitment attending practices and games every week. They were focused on improving their abilities and managed to do just that. Well done to both teams!

Rain calls the shots at Golf Final

Torrential rain was the winner on finals day of the Auckland Secondary School Golf Competition. After 12 holes the game was called off because the greens were under water and the course was unplayable. This didn’t seem to bother a Macleans College player who managed to hit a hole in one on the sixth hole. Macleans College fielded a very strong team, with some of their players being the best in the country and on paper, the stronger team. They were leading after 12 holes but the margin was not so great that Pinehurst were not able to turn it around.

Presently, we are waiting to hear what decision will be made as to the outcome of the match. Either it will be rescheduled, if both schools can decide on a day or it could happen that the match is awarded to Macleans who were leading when the match was called off...

North Island Secondary Schools Mountain Biking Champs

Last weekend, Ben Spence travelled to Wellington to compete in the NISS Mountain Biking Champs. He placed 10th /26 (riders) in both the Enduro and Cross Country events. A very good effort considering he is fairly new to competition riding. Well done Ben!

Kia Ora,

With only a week to go until the end of term we are all ready for a break in the Primary and some time to recharge ready for another term. The first term is quite long for young children but it does give us the opportunity to get outdoors and spend some time challenging ourselves outside of the classroom.

Walking around this week I was so proud of our staff and our students. The levels of engagement in learning are extremely high and it is rare these days to see students off task in classes for any more than a few minutes at a time. The Primary school is such a rewarding part of the school to work in. Our students are happy, focused and display a real love of learning that sees them make high levels of progress in all areas of
the curriculum. They have staff who care about them and are genuinely concerned about their well being and happiness at school. Alongside this are supportive parents who work with us to get the best out of their children. We have really appreciated the support we have received from families this term, the kind words, smiles and chats in the playground enable us to build relationships and model positive behaviour to our young people. We have enjoyed sharing your child’s progress with you this week in conferences and hope that you will talk to them about their goals and targets for next term.

There was a real sense of community at this year’s Shore to Shore fun run and it was wonderful to see over 400 entries this year from Pinehurst. In fact we won the most improved school due to the amount of competitors we had this year.
Our P.E. specialist, Jack Taylor came third in the whole competition, which was amazing and we have challenged him to go for gold next year and come first. No pressure Jack! What I loved the most was spending time with our families chatting about the race and school and plans for the holidays and seeing everyone enjoying each other’s company. Thanks to the Year 1-2 Syndicate for their organisation of the event this year as well as the costumes and general fun and team spirit.

Our next family event is our family fun afternoon on Wednesday and we look forward to seeing you there if you can make it.

Ngā mihi

Sian Coxon, Principal of Primary

Super Writing in P5

This term in Year 1 we have based our learning around a Superhero theme. For the past few weeks we have been enjoying the ‘Supertato’ series of books, written by Sue Hendra. We have been using ideas from these stories to help us develop basic skills with an emphasis on the importance of talk and oral rehearsal. We began by orally rehearsing an adapted version of the book ‘Supertato Veggies Assemble’. In the video you can hear the children orally retelling the story using only a story map that we drew together, actions and of course the very exciting Big Writing ‘Kung Fu Punctuation’.

Once we were able to imitate the story we could then innovate by creating our own story maps with different characters and ideas. We developed skills in sentence structure, understanding of punctuation and orally used new and ambitious vocabulary throughout the week before independently applying what we had learnt to our own writing.

I have enthused writers in P5 who are very proud to show you their writing. Here are just a couple…

Mathematics in P9

P9 have been working very hard during Mathematics time learning all about multiplication and division. For some of the students in P9 this was a very new concept. To help with our understanding of multiplication and division we have been very busy creating pictorial representations. The students then used skip counting or repeated addition to help them solve the facts.

We have also been learning how to explain multiplication/division facts using simple mathematical language for example 4 x 5 = 20 is 'four groups of five objects.' Have a look at all the
different pictorial representations we have created!

Learning About Angles in P10

P10 have discovered learning activities on Seesaw. To help consolidate our knowledge of our learning, interactive activities are set for the students. Once the activity is completed, it is shared straight to Seesaw.

In Maths, we have been learning about angles. We know what a right angle, obtuse angle and an acute angle is. We complete the challenges in our Busy Ants Maths book, then we can have some interactive fun to strengthen our learning. Here are some of P10 students making angles come alive.

Year 4 P.E.

During Weeks 10 and 11 the Year 4 classes are joining with the Year 10 P.E. classes. The Year 10 students are teaching small groups of the Year 4 students some drills and small games. They had their first session yesterday. Here is what the students thought:

“Today we went to the gym for sports activities with Year 10 and it was awesome!” - Zoe

“This morning we did basketball. It was really cool. We were shooting baskets.” - Sofia

“I think
it is a good way to exercise, and I enjoyed it a lot.” - Jessica

“The hoops were really high, which made it challenging, but I enjoyed that.” - Dylan

“In the gym we had lots of exciting activities to do, including Piggy in the Middle, with the Year 10’s.”- Eddy

“This morning P13 & 14 went to the gym to play basketball with the Year 10 students. It was very exciting. They were teaching us fun skills and mini games for basketball.” - Chelsie

Chess Club

Chess Club is happening every Thursday lunchtime in P16 for our keen chess players. This term we have had more than 30 students each week developing their chess skills. Everyone is welcome to join. In July we will be organising teams to compete against other schools.

Chess teaches the children important skills such as focus, visualizing, thinking ahead, weighing up options, problem solving, planning and more. Our students are definitely developing theirs!

I Spy in the Primary

I Spy...teachers running Shore to Shore!

I Spy....P8 perfecting soccer skills in P.E!

I Spy...Glow in the dark space invaders in P2!

I Spy... Year 1 practicing writing in Spanish!

I Spy...much excitement at the college kid's sausage sizzle and bake sale!

I spy... some very cool iMovie trailers in P17!

In Music this week

The First Informal Music Concert of the Year

On Tuesday 16th, from 4-5pm in C2, students of all ages have the opportunity to perform in an Informal Concert Setting. The concerts are held at the end of every term and are designed to be a performance platform through which students can develop their performance skills no matter their level.

If your child has been working on a piece and would like to perform it on Tuesday, please email Ms Naumovska

The Orchestra plays Carmen

The Orchestra is just about to embark on George Bizet’s Habanera. We are fortunate to feature our very own Kairu Han (Year 13), pictured, as a vocal soloist, and who is planning to pursue an operatic performance degree once she leaves Pinehurst. All Orchestra members can access their scores and listen to the pieces we are working on through the Orchestra Schoolbox page.

Production Update

This term over 70 cast members of the Junior College production have been working hard to become familiar with their characters. They have also been learning elements of Shakespearean and Physical Theatre. These pictures show the opening scene from the Tempest where the hapless sailors are caught up in the wrath of Prospero who has sent his indentured servant Ariel to crash their boat on the rocks. They have used Physical Theatre to form the shape of the ship but you’ll have to wait until 13th-15th of June to see the accompanying storm.

Shore to Shore

Excitement and a sprinkle of rain hung in the air as we joined the throngs of runners and walkers at the 2019 Shore to Shore event. Of the 4500 participants, 400 Pinehurst athletes were waiting at the start line. The hooter sounded, and we were off.

The course of 5.9km took us from Takapuna Grammar, along Takapuna beach, Hurstmere Road and then finally over the sandy Milford Beach to the finish line. A team of enthusiastic supporters cheered us on for those last few hundred metres.

Milford Reserve was set up with marquees from all the participating schools and a team of super-hero teachers had been there in the early hours of the morning setting up a table laden with fresh fruit and muffins for us as a post-run treat. It was a great way to quench our thirst and feed our hungry tummies after all that exercise. Pinehurst had some very talented runners including Mr Taylor, our P.E. teacher, who was spotted sprinting over the finish line in an impressive time of 21 minutes (we think he came in third overall).

The Shore to Shore event is a wonderful opportunity for our school community to come together. Pinehurst even managed to win a prize of sports equipment as the most improved school for the number of entries! We would like to thank all the teachers and
families for supporting Pinehurst, and each other, in this family focused, community event. We look forward to seeing you all again next year!

Harbour Volleyball Term 2 Indoor Social League and Indoor VDP

Alumni Update: Katie Abbott

Katie Abbott who graduated from Pinehurst School in 2013 has always been puzzled by the lack of attention given to eating disorders, and the risk factors that come before diagnosis. It was an assignment she did in her Year 12 Psychology class that alerted her to this.

Katie recently finished her Masters in Social Science at the University of Waikato, evaluating the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in the treatment of subclinical disordered eating. In November 2018 she teamed up with Michaela Latimer who had a shared vision in helping people develop a healthy and healing relationship with food and body and they launched their not-for-profit organisation, Āhei.